[TR24][OF] Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II {Deluxe Edition} - 1969/2014 (Rock)

foobar2000 1.2.3 / Замер динамического диапазона (DR) 1.1.1
Дата отчёта: 2014-06-01 00:02:27
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Анализ: Led Zeppelin / Led Zeppelin II
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DR Пики RMS Продолжительность трека
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DR11 -0.90 дБ -15.17 дБ 5:35 01-Whole Lotta Love
DR11 0.00 дБ -14.81 дБ 4:46 02-What Is And What Should Never Be
DR11 0.00 дБ -14.00 дБ 6:19 03-The Lemon Song
DR12 0.00 дБ -16.99 дБ 4:49 04-Thank You
DR9 -1.08 дБ -12.92 дБ 4:14 05-Heartbreaker
DR11 -1.05 дБ -13.58 дБ 2:39 06-Living Loving Maid (She's Just A Woman)
DR11 -1.04 дБ -16.25 дБ 4:34 07-Ramble On
DR11 -1.67 дБ -16.29 дБ 4:21 08-Moby Dick
DR11 -1.00 дБ -15.06 дБ 4:20 09-Bring It On Home
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Количество треков: 9
Реальные значения DR: DR11
Частота: 96000 Гц
Каналов: 2
Разрядность: 24
Битрейт: 4608 кбит/с
Кодек: PCM
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By MARC MYERS
Updated May 30, 2014 1:04 a.m. ET
In late 1968, Led Zeppelin began pioneering a heavier, more metallic-sounding form of rock geared for FM radio's new album-oriented stereo format. By combining a slashing electric guitar and wailing vocals with a rhythmic bass and locomotive drums, the band quickly became the darlings of better stereo systems and large indoor arenas—and inspired several generations of metal-driven rockers.
When "Whole Lotta Love" was released in October 1969, it appeared first on "Led Zeppelin II," the band's second album, and then as a single weeks later—with a shorter edit for AM radio. While the single reached No. 4 on Billboard's pop chart, the album shot to No. 1 in November, and a three-month battle with the Beatles' "Abbey Road" for the top spot ensued.
With the reissue of Led Zeppelin's first three albums on Tuesday by Atlantic Records, guitarist Jimmy Page, 70, recording engineer George Chkiantz, 70, and final-mix engineer Eddie Kramer, 71, reflected on how the famed guitar riff evolved, why the voice of lead vocalist Robert Plant pre-echoes on the recording and how a 1985 lawsuit by blues artist Willie Dixon resulted in a co-songwriter credit for "Whole Lotta Love." (Mr. Plant, who opposes a reunion tour, and bassist John Paul Jones declined to be interviewed.) Edited from conversations.
Jimmy Page: I came up with the guitar riff for "Whole Lotta Love" in the summer of '68, on my houseboat along the Thames in Pangbourne, England. I suppose my early love for big intros by rockabilly guitarists was an inspiration, but as soon as I developed the riff, I knew it was strong enough to drive the entire song, not just open it. When I played the riff for the band in my living room several weeks later during rehearsals for our first album, the excitement was immediate and collective. We felt the riff was addictive, like a forbidden thing.
By January 1969, we had cracked America wide open with the release of our first album and our first U.S. tour. I had this avant-garde master plan for "Whole Lotta Love" and could hear the construction coming together in my head. From the start, I didn't want "Whole Lotta Love"—or any of our songs—to be a single. I had been a session musician since the early 1960s, as had [bassist] John Paul Jones. We had recorded on hundreds of singles and hated the abbreviated, canned format. I also knew that stereo FM radio was emerging in America for albums and I wanted to develop our songs emotionally, beyond just lengthy solos.
Atlantic got it, but in truth, there was little risk on their end. John Paul and I knew our way around a recording studio. More important, I wanted to expand our approach to keep our album from being chopped up for AM radio. To make sure that didn't happen, I produced "Whole Lotta Love"—and the entire second album—as an un-editable expression, a work that had to be aired on stereo FM to make sense.
During the band's rehearsals in early '69, "Whole Lotta Love" sounded strong enough to open our second album, so I wanted to record it first. In April, we went into London's Olympic Studios and cut "Whole Lotta Love" with engineer George Chkiantz, who had recorded Jimi Hendrix there.
George Chkiantz: There were two studios at Olympic—one large and one small. Management had installed our 16-track recorder in the small one with hopes of luring rock bands in there and away from the larger 60-by-40-foot space with 28-foor ceilings, where we recorded mostly classical works and film scores. But Jimmy [Page] chose the larger one—even though it only had an 8-track recorder. He wanted the extra space so the drums could be miked properly for stereo.
I was a relative novice then, and what Jimmy wanted was a stretch given Olympic's traditional way of miking drums. So I invented a new way. I didn't mike the snare, since that would have reduced the size and space of the drum sound. Instead, I used a stereo mike on an 8-foot boom above the drums along with two distant side mikes, to give the tom-toms edge, and a huge AKG D30 mike positioned about two feet from the bass drum. Jimmy knew that high-end mikes didn't have to be up against an instrument to maximize the sound.
Mr. Page: For the song to work as this panoramic audio experience, I needed Bonzo [drummer John Bonham] to really stand out, so that every stick stroke sounded clear and you could really feel them. If the drums were recorded just right, we could lay in everything else.
Mr. Chkiantz: To make the drums sound impressive, I placed them on a platform about 1½ feet off the floor. The floor at Olympic was made of wood, not cement, which meant I needed to keep any drum movement from transmitting rumble across the wood floor to other mikes.
When we began taping, Robert sang in the studio but eventually he moved to the vocal booth to better isolate his voice. At one point, Jimmy began fooling around with a theremin [an electronic instrument] that he brought along to the studio, and we worked it in when the song shifted into a weird, free form.
Mr. Page: The theremin's eerie sound begged for more experimentation. To get my guitar to sound surreal, I detuned it and pulled on the strings for a far-out effect. I was playing a Sunburst 1958 Les Paul Standard guitar I had bought from [James Gang guitarist] Joe Walsh in San Francisco when we were out there on tour. The Standard had this tonal versatility, allowing me to get a blistering high pitch.
Robert's vocal was just as extreme. He kept gaining confidence during the session and gave it everything he had. His vocals, like my solos, were about performance. He was pushing to see what he could get out of his voice. We were performing for each other, almost competitively.
When we toured the U.S. again in May and June, we took the rough-mix tapes along with us in a large trunk. In Los Angeles, we'd work at studios like Mirror, Mystic and A&M to overdub material, and in New York we worked at Mayfair, Groove and Juggy studios. Today, digital files are emailed all over the place, but back then you had to take your tapes if you wanted to work on the road.
When we were ready to mix all the songs for the album, I wanted Eddie Kramer to do it. Eddie had engineered several of the album's songs from scratch in London, and he had worked with us in the American studios. He also had engineered Jimi Hendrix's albums. But by the summer Eddie had relocated to the States, so when we were in New York in August, we called him. "Whole Lotta Love" was all there on tape, but it needed a big, polished sound for the album.
Eddie Kramer: The first time I heard "Whole Lotta Love" was in August '69, when Jimmy and I started working on the album's final mix at New York's A&R Sound.
Jimmy and I had first met in 1964, when he was playing on the Kinks' first album ["Kinks"] at Pye Studios and I was the assistant engineer. I also had heard Led Zeppelin early on in '68, when John Paul Jones had played me an acetate of Led Zeppelin's first album, before it was released. I was blown away—it sounded so hard and heavy.
In New York, the recording console at A&R was fairly primitive. It had only 12 channels with old-fashioned rotary dials to control track levels instead of sliding faders and there were just two pan pots [control knobs] to send the sound from left to right channels. But as Jimmy and I listened to the mix, something unexpected came up.
At the point where the song breaks and Robert slowly wails, "Way down inside…wo-man…you need…love," Jimmy and I heard this faint voice singing the lyric before Robert did on the master vocal track. Apparently Robert had done two different vocals, recording them on two different tracks. Even when I turned the volume down all the way on the track we didn't want, his powerful voice was bleeding through the console and onto the master.
Some people today still think the faint voice was a pre-echo that we added on purpose for effect. It wasn't—it was an accident. Once Jimmy and I realized we had to live with it on the master, I looked at Jimmy, he looked at me and we both reached for the reverb knob at the same time and cracked up laughing. Our instincts were the same—to douse the faint, intruding voice in reverb so it sounded part of the master plan.
Mr. Page: I hadn't heard anything like that before and loved it. I was always looking for things like that when I recorded. That's the beauty of old recording equipment. Robert's faraway voice sounded otherworldly, like a spirit anticipating the vocal he was about to deliver.
Mr. Kramer: By adding reverb, we made his faint voice more dynamic, and it became part of rock history. I also used the pan pots on Jimmy's guitar solo to fling it from side to side, so it would move from one speaker to another. I loved the sonic imagery and I like to think of my mixes as stereophonic paintings.
On the break after the first chorus, where the song gets quiet and we hear Bonzo's cymbals and percussion and Jimmy's distortion, Jimmy and I went nuts on the knobs. We had eight dials controlling the levels on eight individual tracks, so we rehearsed the choreography of what we were going to do to create the far-out sounds. Then we did it and printed the result onto the master stereo reel. Because Jimmy was a studio brat, he really understood how we could push the limits. When you have limitations in the studio, you go for it and stretch your imagination.
Mr. Page: Some people have said "Whole Lotta Love" was based on Willie Dixon's "You Need Love" [recorded by Muddy Waters] and the Small Faces' "You Need Loving." My riff—the basis for the entire song—sounds nothing like either of them. Robert had referenced the Dixon lyrics because with my riff, they felt right. This eventually forced us to give Dixon a co-credit on our song. But if you take Robert's vocal out, there's no musical reference to either song.
When we were done, "Whole Lotta Love" ran 5:33, which at the time was too long to edit for a single. So Atlantic released the album version as a single, which was great. But soon after, Atlantic cut the single down to 3:12 to satisfy AM radio. Weeks before its release, they sent me an acetate of the edit. I played it once, hated it and never listened to the short version again.